February 25 is the 56th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 309 days remaining until the end of the year (310 in leap years).
Holidays
- Christian Feast Day:
- Kitano Baika-sai or “Plum Blossom Festival” (Kitano Tenman-gū Shrine, Kyoto)
- Memorial Day for the Victims of the Communist Dictatorships (Hungary)
- National Day (Kuwait)
- People Power Day (Philippines)
- Soviet Occupation Day (Georgia)
In 138, The Roman emperor Hadrian adopts Antoninus Pius, effectively making him his successor.
In 493, Odoacer surrenders Ravenna after a 3-year siege and agrees to a mediated peace with Theodoric the Great.
In 628, Khosrau II is overthrown by his son Kavadh II.
In 1336, 4,000 defenders of Pilėnai commit mass suicide rather than be taken captive by the Teutonic Knights.
In 1570, Pope Pius V excommunicates Queen Elizabeth I of England.
In 1631, François de Bassompierre, a French courtier, is arrested on Richelieu‘s orders.
In 1723, Christopher Wren, English architect, designed St Paul’s Cathedral (b. 1632) dies. He is one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history. He was accorded responsibility for rebuilding 52 churches in the City of London after the Great Fire in 1666, including his masterpiece, St. Paul’s Cathedral, on Ludgate Hill, completed in 1710. The principal creative responsibility for a number of the churches is now more commonly attributed to others in his office, especially Nicholas Hawksmoor. Other notable buildings by Wren include the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, and the south front of Hampton Court Palace. The Wren Building, the main building at the College of William and Mary, is attributed to Wren. It is the oldest academic building in continuous use in the United States. Educated in Latin and Aristotelian physics at the University of Oxford, Wren was a notable astronomer, geometer, and mathematician-physicist, as well as an architect. He was a founder of the Royal Society (president 1680–82), and his scientific work was highly regarded by Sir Isaac Newton and Blaise Pascal.
In 1793, The department heads of the U.S. government met with President Washington at his home for the first cabinet meeting on record. In attendance was Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of War Henry Knox, and Attorney General Edmund Randolph. One prominent individual who did not attend cabinet meetings was Vice President John Adams.
In 1797, Colonel William Tate and his force of 1000-1500 soldiers surrender after the Last invasion of Britain.
In 1815, Napoleon leaves his exile on the Island of Elba, intending to return to France.
In 1821, Greek War of Independence: Alexander Ypsilantis issues a proclamation at Iași, announcing that he had “the support of a great power” (i.e. Russia).
In 1804, Thomas Jefferson is nominated for president at the Democratic-Republican caucus.
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In 1822, William Pinkney, American politician and diplomat, 7th United States Attorney General (b. 1764) dies. Born in Annapolis, Maryland, Pinkney studied medicine (which he did not practise) and law, becoming a lawyer after his admission to the bar in 1786. After some time practising law in Harford County, Maryland, he participated in Maryland’s state constitutional convention. Pinkney served in the Maryland House of Delegates from 1788 to 1792 and then again in 1795, and served as a U.S. Congressman from the third district of Maryland in 1791 and from the fifth district from 1815 until 1816. He was mayor of Annapolis from 1795 to 1800, Attorney General of Maryland from 1805 to 1806, co-U.S. Minister to the Court of St. James (i.e. Great Britain) (with James Monroe) from 1806 to 1807; they negotiated the Monroe–Pinkney Treaty, which was rejected by President Thomas Jefferson and never went into effect. Pinkney was Minister Plenipotentiary from 1808 until 1811. He then returned to Maryland, serving in the Maryland State Senate in 1811. In 1811 he joined President James Madison‘s cabinet as Attorney General. He was a major in the U.S. Army during the War of 1812 and was wounded at the Battle of Bladensburg, Maryland in August 1814. After the War, he served as Congressman from the fifth district of Maryland from 1815 to 1816. After serving in Congress he became the U.S. Minister Plenipotentiary to Russia from 1816 until 1818, along with a special mission to the Kingdom of Naples. He served as a U.S. Senator from Maryland from 1819 until his death in 1822. He is buried at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC. His son, Edward Coote Pinkney, became an accomplished poet.
In 1831, Battle of Olszynka Grochowska, part of Polish November Uprising against Russian Empire.
In 1836, Samuel Colt is granted a United States patent for the Colt revolver.
In 1843, Provisional Cession of the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands established by Lord George Paulet.
In 1848, Provisional government in revolutionary France, by Louis Blanc‘s motion, guarantees workers’ rights.
In 1856, A Peace conference opens in Paris after the Crimean War.
In 1866, Miners in Calaveras County, California, discover what is now called the Calaveras Skull – human remains that supposedly indicated that man, mastodons, and elephants had co-existed.
In 1870, Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, is sworn into the United States Senate, becoming the first African American ever to sit in the U.S. Congress.
In 1875, Guangxu Emperor of China begins his reign, under Empress Dowager Cixi‘s regency.
In 1901, J. P. Morgan incorporates the United States Steel Corporation.
In 1912, Marie-Adélaïde, the eldest of six daughters of Guillaume IV, becomes the first reigning Grand Duchess of Luxembourg.
In 1916, World War I: the Germans capture Fort Douaumont during the Battle of Verdun.
In 1910, Commuters zip between Manhattan and Hoboken in just ten minutes, thanks to a railway tunnel beneath the Hudson River that opened on this year in 1910. Built between 1904 and 1908 by the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) to allow its trains to reach Manhattan, they opened for passenger service in late 1910.
In 1919, Oregon places a one cent per U.S. gallon tax on gasoline, becoming the first U.S. state to levy a gasoline tax.
In 1921, Tbilisi, capital of the Democratic Republic of Georgia, is occupied by Bolshevist Russia.
In 1923, Bread in Berlin rises to 2,000 mark. ($1,257.13 U. S. Dollars)
In 1928, Charles Jenkins Laboratories of Washington, D.C. becomes the first holder of a television license from the Federal Radio Commission.
In 1932, Adolf Hitler obtains German citizenship by naturalization, which allows him to run in the 1932 election for Reichspräsident.
In 1933, The USS Ranger is launched. It is the first US Navy ship to be built solely as an aircraft carrier.
In 1941, February Strike: In occupied Amsterdam, a general strike is declared in response to increasing anti-Jewish measures instituted by the Nazis.
In 1945, World War II: Turkey declares war on Germany.
In 1947, The State of Prussia ceases to exist.
In 1948, The Communist Party takes control of government in Czechoslovakia and the period of the Third Republic ends.
In 1951, The first Pan American Games are held in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
In 1954, Gamal Abdel Nasser is made premier of Egypt.
In 1956, In his speech On the Personality Cult and its Consequences, Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union denounces the cult of personality of Joseph Stalin.
In 1964, North Korean Prime Minister Kim Il-sung calls for the removal of feudalistic land ownership aimed at turning all cooperative farms into state-run ones.
In 1964, U.S. Air Force launches a satellite employing a US Air Force Atlas/Agena combination from Point Arguello (LC-2-3) in California and from Cape Kennedy in Florida.
In 1968, Vietnam War: 135 unarmed citizens of Hà My village in South Vietnam‘s Quảng Nam Province are killed and buried en masse by South Korean troops in what would come to be known as the Hà My massacre.
In 1971, The first unit of the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, the first commercial nuclear power station in Canada, goes online.
In 1980, The government of Suriname is overthrown by a military coup which is initiated by the bombing of the police station from an army ship off the coast of the nation’s capital, Paramaribo
In 1983, Tennessee Williams, American playwright (b. 1911) dies. He was an American playwright, author of many stage classics. After years of obscurity, he became suddenly famous with The Glass Menagerie (1944), closely reflecting his own unhappy family background. This heralded a string of successes, including A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Orpheus Descending, and Sweet Bird of Youth. His later work attempted a new style that did not appeal to audiences, and alcohol and drug dependence further inhibited his creative output. Williams adapted much of his best work for the cinema, and also wrote short stories, poetry, essays and a volume of memoirs.
In 1986, People Power Revolution: President of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos flees the nation after 20 years of rule; Corazon Aquino becomes the Philippines‘ first woman president.
In 1987, Southern Methodist University‘s football program is the first college football program to receive the Death Penalty by the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions. It was revealed that athletic officials and school administrators had knowledge of a “slush fund” used to make illegal payments to the school’s football players as far back as 1981.
In 1991, Gulf War: An Iraqi scud missile hits an American military barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia killing 28 U.S. Army Reservists from Pennsylvania.
In 1991, The Warsaw Pact is declared disbanded.
In 1992, Khojaly massacre: about 613 civilians are killed by Armenian armed forces during the conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan.
In 1994, Mosque of Abraham massacre: In the Cave of the Patriarchs in the West Bank city of Hebron, Baruch Goldstein opens fire with an automatic rifle, killing 29 Palestinian worshippers and injuring 125 more before being subdued and beaten to death by survivors.
In 1997, Yi Han-yong, North Korean defector was murdered by unidentified assailants in Bundang, South Korea.
In 2005, Ben Bowen, American brain cancer victim (b. 2002) dies. Benjamin David “Ben” Bowen (November 14, 2002 – February 25, 2005),commonly called Big Ben Bowen, was a boy from Huntington, West Virginia, who was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour in 2004. His family has used his story to raise awareness of childhood cancer and to raise almost $4,000,000 for St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Ben was born to Tom and Jennifer Bowen on November 14, 2002. Ben had a normal infancy until age 16 months, when he was diagnosed with a golf-ball–sized tumor in the middle of his brain. Ben Bowen went to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital for emergency brain surgery. The tumor proved to be a very aggressive, rare, and fast-growing atypical teratoid rhabdoid tumor (AT/RT). The Bowens transferred to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in March 2004. Ben’s initial treatments included four brain surgeries and chemotherapy; he was too young for radiation therapy. During this treatment period, Ben Bowen picked up the nickname “Big Ben” because of his “big” demeanor, bravery and smile. The tumor reoccurred by November 2004, and no known medicines or treatments were left to help him.With assistance from Federal Express, and the family of a victim in the September 11 attacks (whom Tom assisted in the recovery of), the Bowen family took Ben Bowen on a special two-week trip to Disney World, where they celebrated his second birthday.
In 2009, Members of the Bangladesh Rifles mutiny at their headquarters in Pilkhana, Dhaka, Bangladesh, resulting in 74 deaths, including more than 50 army officials.
In 2010, Illegal Aliens Will Use ‘Shovels and Axes’ Against Americans In Armed Rebellion – Americans for Legal Immigration PAC is releasing a video clip today that shows an illegal alien supporter in Arizona claiming that shovels and axes will be used against Americans just prior to the riot, where police officers and American citizens were assaulted by the mob protesting SB 1070
In 2015, At least 310 people are killed in avalanches in northeastern Afghanistan.
In 2015, The Rev. Al Sharpton’s silence was bought for a cool $3.8 million — so that he wouldn’t complain about the lack of black cable TV programming, an explosive $20 billion lawsuit alleged. The National Association of African-American Owned Media claimed Comcast paid Sharpton and his National Action Network “cash ‘donations’ ” in exchange for not screaming about its lack of solely black-owned channels. The cable giant also assured that the activist would keep his $750,000-a-year gig as a host on MSNBC, which it co-owns, even as his ratings slump, the suit alleged.
In 2016, Three people are killed and fourteen others injured in a series of shootings in the small Kansas cities of Newton and Hesston.